Page 136 of Shadow Beasts

“What?”

“That’s what he was saying,” Dewey reported from inside his carrier. “He said gone. Well, no. He said taken. And the other word he kept repeating was werewolf.”

A growl sounded from deep in the jungle. Paige snapped her head toward it.

“I think we’d better go,” Dewey said from inside the carrier. “Now.”

CHAPTER 33

Paige sucked in a shaky breath and nodded. “But which way?”

“We came in on the side with the steps,” Dewey answered.

“All the sides have steps!” Paige gulped in a few breaths as she searched for something familiar. She pointed to the stone statue of Xibalcan. “There!”

“Yes,” Dewey shouted. “We saw that when we came out of the jungle. That way.”

Paige raced toward an opening in the trees and hurried along the path Mateo had cut earlier. Her feet pounded against the earth as she put as much distance as possible between herself and the temple.

She slowed but did not stop, gasping for air after fifteen minutes of hard running. Following the cut path as best as she could, she walked toward what she hoped was the Temple of Kukulcan while the sun lowered in the sky.

After two hours, they emerged at the tourist destination. Several people still milled around the temple. She breathed a sigh of relief while she trudged away from the site. Several tourists cast sidelong glances at her as she passed them, covered from head to toe in dirty smudges and dripping sweat.

She plopped onto a stone bench and slid the backpack sideways, then she dug inside it for her cell phone. An x indicated no service on her phone, and she sighed as she tossed it back inside.

“I saw a taxi stand in the parking lot earlier.”

“Let’s hope there’s a cab,” Paige said, shimmying the backpack onto her shoulders and rising from the bench.

She lumbered the remaining distance to the parking lot, found the taxi stand, and secured a ride. As she slid into the back seat, giving the driver her destination, she fanned herself.

The driver shot her a glance in his rearview mirror, his forehead crinkling.

“Don’t ask,” Paige said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

He returned his gaze to the road ahead, driving them to the private airstrip. She climbed from the back of the cab, paid the driver, and crossed to the waiting plane.

The pilot and copilot lounged inside in the leather chairs. They leapt to their feet as she slogged through the door, eyeing her from head to toe.

“Don’t ask,” she repeated.

“We need to get going,” Dewey said.

“We’re refueled and ready,” the pilot answered. “Where to?’

Paige shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t–“

Her voice cut off, and she popped her eyes open, snapping her fingers.

“Scotland. Just a second.” Paige swung the backpack off her back and dumped it on the couch before she grabbed the RP from the table Dewey’d left it on earlier.

She punched in a search term, then popped her head upward. “Loch Larny, Scotland.”

The pilot nodded. “We’ll get a course plotted to the nearest private air club and be underway as soon as we can.”

“Thanks.”

After securing the cabin door, the two men disappeared into the cockpit. Paige unzipped Dewey’s carrier and allowed him to fly out.